


Moss On The Ruins

by Trovia



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 71st Hunger Games, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Dubious Consent, Emotional Abuse, F/M, Forced Prostitution, Forced Relationship, Gen, Minor Character Death, Mockingjay Spoilers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-24 07:44:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trovia/pseuds/Trovia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the 71st Hunger Games, and Finnick Odair is ordered to mentor a boy he isn’t even sure he wants to bring home. With Johanna Mason alienating her friends and Haymitch Abernathy falling off the wagon, he finds himself struggling to not lose the last shreds of his sanity and soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Turns out that it’s pretty much impossible for me to write a THG backstory without making a couple of assumptions. Numero uno: To me, Johanna doesn’t appear like somebody who got out of prostitution, whether she lost all her family or not. Secondly: Snow would be stupid if he just went and killed all his leverage dead at the first offense. I don’t think Snow is stupid. So I’m not picturing Haymitch getting out of it that way, either. Especially since, well. Haymitch didn’t seem all that happy about Finnick telling the public about the prostitution. And we know he’ll lie with a straight face if it suits his needs. So a part of this fic addresses the intricacies of what all that means.
> 
> The fic is also heavily influenced by conversations I’ve had with Millari and Deathmallow. Millari, thank you very much for the beta and the meticulous line-by-line breakdown.

_Niko Genero is too perfect for the Hunger Games._

That was how the 71st Hunger Games started for Finnick Odair: Staring into the bathroom mirror on the train, racing towards the Capitol with that slight persistent hum of engines – barely audible, but always present. And thinking that his tribute was too smart and too strong and far too attractive for a Games, because he might just win. 

A mirror image should just exist, Finnick thought, watching the man in the mirror blink with an unmoved face. You should have looked at it too often to recognize beauty or flaws. However, all Finnick could see was an almost repulsive amount of beauty. His shoulders had broadened and filled out since he’d grown up, currently barely concealed by a transparent shirt – more than he usually wore, he thought with dark humor, but his stylist hadn’t gotten her hands on him yet. Hooded eyes no matter what he did to change his expression, as if he was just born to be that person, and all that flawless skin, ready to be licked. He’d sleep with himself, Finnick thought. Why shouldn’t he – he was beautiful. He was so symmetrical, it barely left room for personality. 

He wondered if Niko Genero – just sexy enough – had ever thought the same about himself. 

At his Games, Finnick’s cheek had been sliced open – actually sliced _open_ , with a knife. He tried picturing that scar now, running from the corner of his mouth to his ear. It would make him look as if he grinned, Finnick thought. Like a demon. Everybody would be forced to stare at it. 

There weren’t any scars, of course; there weren’t any, or he might… Finnick sighed at the thought, and that sick sense of satisfaction imploded. He wouldn’t take a knife and recreate that scar. He wouldn’t. 

Finnick closed his eyes and turned his head away.

It was the year after Four had won the Games. The year after Annie Cresta had earned a disaster victory at the 70th Games. District Four didn’t care how she’d done it, of course – treading water for twelve hours was arguably a true Four win, his brothers had told him some had boasted at the docks, with an air of defiance as if they expected him to disagree. Like Finnick, Annie hadn’t even been a volunteer. 

Like Finnick, Annie Cresta had fallen apart, though she’d done it right there in the arena where everyone could see instead of sleepwalking through her kills first as if it was actually a children’s game. They hadn’t properly met, but he still thought she had to be smarter than him. Certainly, she had more of a soul.

There was a knock at the door. 

“Mr. Odair, are you in there?” Honestia, the escort, chirped in her singsongy Capitol accent. He’d never understood why she insisted on the last names when they were _Finnick_ and _Mags_ and _Four male_ for everyone else. They belonged to everybody, after all, even to Honestia. “Mrs. Swanton and the tributes are waiting for you. Mr. Genero would love to start discussing his strategy now, I have been made to understand.”

Finnick sighed and gave himself a start. 

“Good things come to those who wait, Honestia!” he cheerfully called back in what was almost a Capitol voice. “And believe me, _my_ rewards are worth waiting for!” But he didn’t manage a chuckle at the exasperated sound she made, waiting for the sound of her heels to retreat before he swept the bathroom one last time. 

Yes. Yes, he’d drained it all away. 

All the puke was gone, the white marble sink shining clean.

It was the fourth year since Snow had called him back to the Capitol to show him a video of Haymitch Abernathy’s mother and brother and girlfriend shot in the back of their heads. It was his first as a mentor. Finnick wasn’t stupid or blind enough to think that that new role meant the Capitol’s interest in that man in the mirror had waned. It wouldn’t for a long time. 

_Man,_ he thought, giving himself an affirmative nod. _Not a boy anymore, not for a while._

He should know. He felt like a hundred at least. 

* * *

Niko Genero had volunteered, so he was eighteen. Unlike others, he hadn’t changed his name to something shiny and Capitol that would give him an edge in his Games marketing, and mark the beginning of the probably short rest of his life. He was tall, as tall as Finnick, and had the strong back and shoulders of a swimmer. His skin was black like ebony and his hair was braided tightly to his skull, and even after a year of avoiding the Games schools and the other victors, Finnick had heard that Niko and his fighting sticks could probably beat anybody in District Four. 

It would be easier if Niko was an idiot who thought he’d already made it in life, Finnick thought with resignation. Somebody who thought this was already it, celebrated as a volunteer by all of Four, his name carved into the Monument of Sacrifice at Middletown. But Niko was obviously sharp. He was tense, as if the Games had already started – which they _had_ – keeping a vigilant eye on Finnick wherever he was in the room. He set Finnick on edge.

Good.

He stiffened when Finnick stepped behind his chair and leaned in too closely to snatch a cookie off the table, intrusive enough to smell the lemon wax that slicked Niko’s braids. But Niko didn’t flinch away. 

“I think I can win this,” he said, staring straight ahead. 

“Good for you,” Finnick cheerfully retorted, circling the table to sprawl on the couch on the far end of the room, too pliant for a mere chair. “Now convince me.” He gesticulated grandly. “Then convince Panem.” There was a Two volunteer shaped like a bull this year, a desperation volunteer in Five. Nobody would have taken special note of Niko yet. 

The young man dropped his eyes, tracing along the edge of the table with his thumb. The first sign of nerves Finnick had seen. “I’ve got guts,” Niko slowly said. He had a pleasant low voice too, not like a child but like somebody Finnick would stick his cock into in other circumstances. “I’ve got patience. I can wait out the field if that’s what you want, and I’ll give them a good show. I’m better than that boy from Two, even though he’ll be stronger.” He looked up, straight at Finnick, almost a challenge. “I’m beautiful, too.” As if he was trying the notion on for size, smart enough to be aware it was important but unclear as to why. Skill was all that had counted in his world up to the Reaping. 

Finnick had never understood why the teachers at Games school didn’t tell the volunteers about what was waiting for a victor, but he figured there wouldn’t be any volunteers anymore if they did. Maybe Niko would consider it part of the sacrifice.

In a way, that would be true. 

Finnick stifled a snort of a laugh, trying desperately not to give into that need to despair. 

_Oh, Niko,_ he thought. _You haven’t even started to figure it out._

Not as smart as he’d thought, after all. 

* * *

Lately, Finnick found himself missing the three weeks he'd spent in the arena - with a fiery passion that scared him out of his mind.

Nobody remembered that now, but his Games had dragged on for twenty-two endless days, and climaxed with a particularly gruesome Career pack tear-up, people butchering the ones they’d grown to like best. Finnick –just an impressionable kid with a good throwing arm – hadn’t had a clue what it was that he was _doing_ , blind to what it meant for his soul and integrity to spear other children like fish. But realization had dawned as he’d grown up, which had been fast. They taught you it was okay to kill for survival at Four, but people who said that hadn’t had blood dribbling over their hand when they moved in for a kill. You couldn’t throw a trident at a catch in a net, not if you still needed that net, you had to get close. 

The tribute from Two had lashed at his face and sliced open his cheek, and there had been blood, everywhere, dripping onto the remains of his tribute garb and coloring his lips and chin a terrifying red. Tiny fourteen-year-old menace, sweet and horrible at once. Finnick wasn’t ever able to turn his eyes away at the replay, astounded at how that sea monster was him. 

Yet things had been easy in the arena, and heavens, he wanted that back. Easy. Straightforward. Kill or die. So much better than _Fuck or we’ll kill your mother first_ , or, _Let your brothers think it’s your own idea to sleep with those people or else._ Blood had dripped off his hand when he’d killed the twelve-year-old in his net, and that made him a killer. He grew hot all over when he fucked Hersilius Butterbulp, and he came deliciously when Hersilius fucked him, and it wasn’t supposed to make him a slut. 

But Finnick had long since lost the habit of deluding himself. 

* * *

It had been a bad year home at Four, between Games, almost as if there was something wrong in his brain. Finnick had been struggling to get out of bed in the morning and dreading every day the Games got closer, fear leaving a lump in his throat. Not wanting to look his parents in the eye. Being expected to help out at Games school in Northbeach while Mags was on Victory Tour, and just never showing up.

Annie Cresta had returned from the Tour more broken than she’d been to start with, his old Games school teacher Calina had known to share when they met across their lawns. Mags had told him to go and see if maybe he could help her transition, but he hadn’t. Instead, Finnick had preferred sitting at the little lonely bay close to the Victor’s Rock where he’d used to try and figure that trident business out, no matter that everyone said that was a ridiculous weapon, even for fishing. That point had been made seven years ago for everyone to see, so he just sat there now. Trident resting on his lap, nothing to train for anymore, watching the waves. 

When it came to the Capitol, though, the one luxury he wasn't allowed was choice, so here he was back on a train to the 71st Games, having given up on sleep for now. Finnick never had been able to sleep on the train. It always felt like the engines became louder at night, worming their way through his ears, into his brain, reading his thoughts. He got up instead, thinking he might try and mix himself a drink now that he was twenty, and even his father wouldn’t mind. 

Mags was sitting in the lunch compartment, reading glasses on her tiny, wrinkly nose. Finnick froze when he saw her, fighting a sudden anxiety that he might blush when she looked up, although Finnick Odair never blushed. Though, her face moved into a smile at his sight, so he let the tension wash out of his body, on purpose, and sauntered right in. Mags was fierce, but she was tiny. She was just Mags, Finnick told himself. Mags, who’d made him fearless for a while and who’d brought him home. 

“I’ve never seen you write in that thing, you know,” he said, referring to the leather-bound mentoring journal in her hands which was, he knew from idling evenings away at her house, filled with little notes and names. Stepping up to the minibar, he scanned the assortment of liquors and juices for something that ideally, would be almost unbearably sweet. “Not that I know what kinds of notes you would have needed during my Games. ‘Number of times a fan swooned’?” He turned to give her a wink. 

In the corner of his eye, Mags dropped the notebook into her lap, and rewarded him with a smirk. “It was already full when you were born,” she informed him primly. “They think they tell a new story every year at the Games, but history is just repeating itself, for now.”

“Oh right, I forgot that you played the slut angle for Caramel, too,” Finnick thoughtlessly quipped. Thirty-eight year old Caramel Doll was his neighbor, and had these episodes where he started clutching his head whenever he laid eyes on Finnick – not that Finnick couldn’t empathize with that sentiment. 

Then he realized what he’d just said and squeezed his eyes shut. _Geez. Idiot._ He was talking to _Mags._ Apparently, he really needed to sleep. “I’m sorry,” he managed. It hadn’t been like that. He’d been _fourteen._ “Forget that I said that.”

But he already knew he’d slipped. Mags was quiet behind him for a moment. She was like a rock, Finnick didn’t know how she did it, and that scared him right now. Mags was a legend in Four, more than a person. When Finnick’s name was called and she’d introduced herself as his mentor on the train, he’d been so sure that he’d come home just because that woman had told him he could. Even if he hadn’t been a volunteer. She was practically another grandmother these days.

Right now he was just glad she was so old; he wouldn’t ever know how to try coming on to Mags, and how sick was it that he was even thinking of that. 

“Finnick…” she said patiently behind him, and Finnick violently shook his head. 

“Don’t,” he said, because his sex life was one topic he never wanted to breach with Mags, and continued in one exhaled breath, “So have we ever even had two victors in a row? Niko and Corina should both stand a chance.”

Finnick was still staring at the bar, at the assembly of juices to cover the taste of the booze – very Capitol, that. Hesitating for a moment, he firmly reached out and poured some of them together in a mix he’d learned at the Training Center. It had a bar on the first floor, where the mentors often met up with the other victors on their breaks. Finnick sometimes chatted up the bartender when he waited for his driver to arrive.

“We will certainly get both of them into the Career pack this year,” Mags agreed after a loaded pause, one that made him tense. She didn’t even bother answering the question, not when every child in the district knew the answer to that one. “Corina will be overshadowed by Niko, so we’ll trust that she’ll be overlooked by the other tributes like you were, and work with her after. She’ll have to convince the Capitol that she is smart enough to outlast the pack, and I think she might be. She can only do that by herself.”

“But Niko will be the priority tribute,” Finnick said, hands almost not trembling when he recapped the bottle. 

“Of course. He’s everything you can ask for in a tribute. He’s not a sensation yet, but he can easily become one in the Games. He’ll shine once he fights.”

“I told him to play up the charms.” It was hard not to sound harsh about that. Apparently, playing it up was just the way it started. Offer it up on a plate so people would notice they could have that one, if they just paid up. 

Mags sighed. “You can’t refuse to talk about it forever, lad.”

Lad. One time, Finnick had looked up that endearment at the Justice Building library when he was waiting for a delayed train. Nobody used it in the district except Mags. It meant both _boy_ and _man_ as well as _stablehand_ , bizarrely, and he was never sure which one he wanted it to be. Being a servant of Mags’ would be easy, and he was already used to that role. 

Claudius Templesmith sure didn’t want him to act like a boy when he had Finnick suck his cock. 

“Finnick,” Mags said kindly. “Finnick, child, listen to yourself.” He heard her exhale a small sound when she got out of her chair, frail as she was becoming. A looming presence somewhere in his back despite of that, but Finnick still couldn’t make himself turn around. He hated looking Mags in the eyes. He’d come to hate looking most people he knew in the eyes this year, his family and other Four victors, but Mags had brought him home to be a district hero and Mags was worse. 

“But I didn’t say anything,” he pointed out shakily. “So there’s nothing to listen to.”

“Exactly,” she replied with a trace of dry humor. 

Then she had worked her way over, a tiny shadow in the corner of his eyes, as if they weren’t just facing a row of drinks and a wall that way, and a fruity drink with too much alcohol in it that Finnick still hadn’t touched. 

Numbing reality wouldn’t make it go away, either.

“You know why I asked you to talk to Annie?”

“You want me to start pulling my weight,” he told the wall, hearing Mags snort. 

“Leave that to the fishermen,” she retorted, making his lips twitch despite himself. She’d fucking harpooned people to death at her arena, sixty-one years ago, and she’d taught him knots he hadn’t even heard of, but she held strange contempt for gutting fish. “Annie and you are the same age,” she continued, in a firmer voice. “You can’t keep relying on old Mags. You should help each other. Start a new generation of victors. That’s how it should be.”

“Annie Cresta’s life is just a little different from mine, Mags,” Finnick said with as much poise as he could muster. 

Annie Cresta didn’t even need to go back to the Capitol for this Games, not with a mental instability like that.

“Her aunt died of a bad batch of medicine this winter,” Mags said. “Snow had introduced Annie to her sponsors on her Tour, but she … was so far gone. I’ve told you how she gets.”

 _Damn._ Finnick was trembling for real suddenly, having to hold onto the bar except his fingers threatened to slip, tremors spreading through all of his body until the whole world seemed to be shaking. It happened so fast that he couldn’t catch himself in time. Nausea crept up from his guts, taste of metal in his mouth. Mags had never brought it up directly like this, not when he wouldn’t let her, had never called it whoring or getting around or fucking everybody who could pay, which was what it was. The sudden verbal acknowledgement was too unexpected when his defenses had been so low for weeks, and at that moment, he didn’t think he could deal. He didn’t want it to happen to that girl, who’d made him smile at her pre-Games interview because she’d seemed funny and kind. And he wanted Mags to _not know._ He needed her to pretend.

Mags was clucking her tongue, but Finnick still flinched away from her when her hand brushed his elbow. Tears were welling up in his eyes as if his whole self-control was rushing out of him, and, _fuck._ He _hated_ crying. He hated how it made him feel. He was twenty fucking years old and he knew there was nothing wrong with crying, but he should still know how to not do it.

He couldn’t go back to the Capitol. He couldn’t.

He couldn’t lead Niko Genero into either certain death or a life like his and still get home with the last shreds of himself intact. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to Annie,” he managed once it felt safe to speak, angrily brushing away the wetness on his cheeks. 

_I’m sorry I’m not what a victor is supposed to be. I’m sorry I grew up without becoming that man._

_I’m sorry I’m me._

“Hush,” Mags said, resigned.


	2. Chapter 2

Finnick hadn’t mentored before, not when doing so would have kept him away from the Capitol clients. That was the one thing preferable about mentoring, though the thought twisted something in his guts: As long as Niko stayed alive, he wouldn’t be receiving any of those notes about a name and date and mode of transport. 

Great world. 

Finnick only hoped that the Games would last long enough for him to get himself together, and that whatever happened, he wouldn’t start falling apart again the way he almost had with Mags on the train. _Don’t cry in public,_ he firmly told himself when the limousine drove them from the train station towards downtown. _Whatever you have to do._

Most of the other mentors had already gathered at the Training Center bar when they got there, happy enough to finally greet him as one of their own. 

Finnick had listened to Mags and the others from Four often enough to not be all that nervous about the new responsibility – he knew the Games inside out, and there’d rarely ever been anything he hadn’t been naturally good at in his life. But it was still nice to be patted on the back and be hugged, to be offered to just ask any question at any time, and getting to know some of the more private victors, who hadn’t been to the Capitol since he’d won, was definitely a plus. 

Well, maybe not Clarity Rudder, the thin-lipped stocky victor from One who’d won the Games right after his, and who gave him a long look top to bottom, as if she was inspecting him, contemplating what he looked like underneath his sparse clothes and not coming away with a positive conclusion. Finnick remembered her wreaking havoc with a katana at the bloodbath; the Capitol had called it the only highlight of those whole Games. 

Clarity shook his hand and immediately let it drop, turning to continue her conversation with Cashmere as if he wasn’t standing there. Finnick blinked at his hand, and put it down.

“Girl talk,” Brutus announced. He threw an arm around him, as if they were suddenly best buddies instead of two men who’d barely ever met. Giving Finnick’s shoulder a surprisingly warm squeeze, he led him to the bar and ordered him a drink. “All ‘swords here, swords there’ with those two, as if that was all there is to a good Games. And about time you took a shot at mentoring, boy. A couple of us are going out for drinks tonight, if you want to come.

“Not you,” he added in Haymitch’s direction, who was so drunk he was pretty much asleep at the bar. “You’ve had quite enough, young man.”

Blearily raising his head, Haymitch crooked his hand in Brutus’ direction to show him a finger. Brutus laughed. 

“Shame about his tributes again,” he still told Finnick later with a shake of his head. “Did you see them at the Reaping? It’s not a good Games if you just want to take them home and feed them up.”

Finnick had spent enough time at the Capitol to get used to the disturbing Games culture of Two, and proceeded to let Brutus’ passionate talk about coaching technique wash over him. 

Brutus wasn’t as unsettling as the quiet woman with the stringy hair, who looked up at one point to stare at the buffet, pale and trembling from a desperate attempt of holding some sort of anxiety attack at bay. Various victors were watching her with apparent concern, as if she might burst.

“Ralda Cavalera from Six,” Mags informed him. “It’s good to see her back. She hasn’t mentored in years, although I know she corresponds with Haymitch and Wiress.” And, off-handedly, “She’d profit from meeting Annie,” which was a way of saying that Ralda Cavalera was as crazy as a bug. Finnick dimly remembered her having won one of the late Fifties, round-faced eighteen-year-old making a new alliance every day and convincing younger starving kids to eat her poisoned supplies. 

Just looking at her fighting her anxiety made Finnick grow aware of his own disquiet all over again. So he excused himself from Mags to step onto the balcony for a minute and get some fresh air. 

Instead of solitude, he got greeted by the distinctive shape of Johanna Mason, pushing a young man against a wall and kissing him as if she meant to crawl inside his throat. 

“Men’s room in five,” she informed the boy when she shoved him away a second later; after a moment, Finnick recognized Kyle Akumi, District Five’s recent victor, looking part excited, part scared. “You better push that tongue right between my legs when I step into the room. 

“There something you want?” she addressed Finnick before Kyle had managed to scramble, throwing him an unkind look. Though he had a clear sense that her words at Kyle had been meant to be heard. “Because I’m kind of busy warming up,” she added with a bitter kind of anger in her voice.

Finnick almost chuckled. Catching up with Johanna had to be better than taking a minute for himself. Snow had started selling them at roughly the same time; she was the closest friend he had at the Games. “Are you sure Kyle is legal this year? I didn’t know that was your type.”

“You wouldn’t believe how little I care.” Johanna shrugged tensely. Dressed in a revealing skirt with a slit that reached all the way up to her thigh, and the trademark endless heels, her stylist obviously had already played dress-up with her, making her look every bit the high-priced whore. They did that if they planned on putting you on a particularly tight schedule. Finnick, in his bare excuse of a pair of pants, should know. 

Now though, he frowned. Johanna had always been brash, but there was an air of anger, almost fury surrounding her now, equal parts directed at the world at large and very much personally at him. Not like she was interested in bonding with anybody, never mind him. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” Johanna said, “My tribute sucks, so I’ve got to get to into gear here for all the sex I’ll be having next week.”

“Is everything alright?” he asked. 

She pressed her lips together. “You’ve got a problem with me _enjoying_ myself for a change, Odair?”

“Seems like a crappy way to be deflowered.” He shrugged. 

Johanna’s lips thinned. “Tough,” she almost hissed it, pressing the words out through her teeth. “Me is who he’ll get.” She stalked past him then, making sure to push him aside with her shoulder on the way to the door. Compared to him, she was slender and small, and her balance was forever shot in those shoes, but there was still enough anger vibrating in all of her body for Finnick to instinctively retreat a step. Then, Johanna paused, and looked at him with unveiled contempt. “Is everything _alright_?” she repeated his question. “Everything’s peachy, Finnick. I’m off to another exciting round of getting it on with everybody I meet, and it looks like I’ll be doing it for the rest of my life. So excuse me if I’ll see if sweet Kyle here will actually do what I want, which would be _lovely_ , and maybe there’ll be days when I’m old when I won’t have to fucking care about what’s best for everybody but me.” 

Her face twisted into something ugly. “Go serenade Panem with a poem, Finnick,” she said. “And happy fucking Hunger Games to you.”

Then she was off, and Finnick grabbed onto something blindly to, just, take a breath and hold it in, and slowly let it out, too many thoughts in his head to even understand them all.

* * *

The training week rushed by faster than Finnick had anticipated. 

There was more to do than he’d assumed. Niko and Corina both showed off in training, working their way into the usual Career alliance each on their own, and keeping a healthy industrious distance from the other. Fifteen-year-old non-volunteer Corina wasn’t a natural fighter, but she was smart and of course, she had attended Games school; both Finnick and Niko knew she might as well become a surprise contender in the right arena. Meanwhile, Mags sent Finnick off to the numerous sponsoring events of the pre-Games. She was too old to suffer through all of them herself, she claimed, but Woof and Brutus and Haymitch – when he was sober enough – willingly took Finnick under their wing. Chatting up people for their money wasn’t that different from chatting them up to have sex. Four was a popular district. It had fans. 

“Your tribute seems a little, shall I say naïve?” one sponsor said disdainfully, sipping at his cloudy red drink. “He is built as if he’s twenty-five, I’ll grant him that, but his eyes… As if he’s _new_ to the Capitol, if you know what I mean.”

_Where do you think we raise our tributes, at the Training Center bar?_

“ _That_ should be the least of your worries,” Finnick purred, his fingers running up and down the straw of his cocktail. “I can assure you our Niko is _very_ mature.”

“Good one,” Haymitch told him later, toasting him at the bar. 

“Not cruising yourself?” Finnick asked and took a seat. 

“Nah,” Haymitch said. “They all think I’m disgusting these days, lucky me.”

Finnick pictured becoming publically known as a drunk. Gossip news channels analyzing close-ups of his waistline to estimate the weight that he’d gained, to study the definition he’d lost and the embarrassment he’d become, like they’d been doing with Haymitch, these last two awful liquor-hazed years.

It wasn’t hard to see the appeal.

* * *

The light at Mentor Central was dimmed before the tributes entered the arena. The room looked much like Finnick had envisioned it from hearing older mentors talk – twelve consoles and twenty-four screens, twenty-three of which would turn blank at some point. But he somehow hadn’t expected that the lights would be dimmed, the faces of the mentors left and right of him covered in the flickering lights of the consoles. Finnick should have expected it, though. Children were scheduled to die here, after all, so the Capitol staged it like the spectacle it was, everywhere, even here where there were only victors, used to being humiliated in that way long since. 

But that wouldn’t be like Snow, to ever let them breathe. 

The victor feeds blared to life above their heads. Claudius Templesmith’s voice was laced with an ominous echo when he started moving through the countdown, reverberating at them twice, once through the speakers at the walls and once through the headset, from the arena. 

Mentors leaned forward in their seat, and Finnick did so as well, taking in everything at once. Twenty-four tributes lined up around a marmoreal Cornucopia that held its contents close to its mouth this year, and white rocks high as walls all around them, almost entirely covered in moss. 

The camera panned across what looked to be the ruins of a long lost city, except no city but the Capitol was built from so much stone in all of Panem, so it gave off a strangely artificial modern vibe. No forests or trees – half across the room, Gang Chen from Seven groaned in dismay at the sight. No mutts or animals that Finnick could make out. Just endless rows of fallen stone underneath the blue sky. At least, there was a small creek snaking through the arena, and the moss seemed moist as well. Plenty of places to hide, but none for the long run; a tribute with that strategy would have to stay on their feet. 

“I don’t believe I’ve seen an arena this small in my life,” Beetee was remarking to his partner on Finnick’s left. “This could become an extraordinarily quick Games, I’d say.”

On Finnick’s right, Mags was nodding along. Leaning closer to Finnick while Templesmith reached forty, thirty-nine, thirty-eight, she was nibbling at a pretzel stick. “So sponsorship will be a priority this year. It’s good that they will be with the pack and gather supplies at the Cornucopia.” Finnick found himself nodding along. Survival skills wouldn’t save you in a city arena, bare like District Thirteen might have looked if they’d ever use new footage. 

“Twenty,” Templesmith boomed. “Nineteen.”

There was no expression on Niko’s face now but determination, chin raised in what almost looked like defiance. _Let there be fighting sticks,_ Finnick prayed, and then the gong went off and it was bloody and brutal and awful. There was an urge he’d always had to avert his eyes from that, a need to just not _see_ , that his own Games had only served to intensify. It was different if it wasn’t him fighting, if all he could do was watch helplessly. But he was a mentor now, so he tried to ignore the voice in his head screaming _no_ , and kept his eyes trained on the feed, no matter what it did to him inside. 

The six Careers started shouting commands at each other across the field before the fight had even started, marching towards the center like one man. Niko found himself partnered with the One male, Corina trailed after Two female, and they even didn’t reach the Cornucopia first, they didn’t have to, overpowering the two girls already there by sheer intimidation. It was a classic Career district alliance this year, and the three male Careers, in particular, were tall and strong.

One of the kids with Haymitch’s hair foolishly tried to make a run for the center, just to die when she was tripped by a girl in Six yellow and stabbed by Nine. The Seven female was bleeding out on scarred concrete and nobody had time or inclination to fully put her out. On Finnick’s left, both Three mentors took their headsets off; after a while, Finnick heard Haymitch telling the room at large, “Well, that’s it for me,” before he got up as well. 

It was quick. Most bloodbaths were quick; it just didn’t take that long to butcher a couple of kids without proper defense strategies. Finnick groaned when the only fighting sticks at the Cornucopia went to the Eleven tributes, who managed an orderly retreat at the side of the two Fives – a short look confirmed that Eleven’s Seeder was already conferring with Five’s Kyle. Niko didn’t hesitate, and grabbed some spears instead. 

“You need to start calling up sponsors as well,” Mags told Finnick once it was done, the pack setting up camp in the remains of a basement while seven children lay dead on the screens all around. Strictly speaking, Finnick supposed Mags couldn’t give him orders about Niko, but he also knew even Brutus would heed her advice. “Do it right away. It will be a quick Games, and the alliance will be falling apart fast. You will have to pool with Two and One for now, but build a budget to use later if you can. Niko will need to be sent a better weapon.”

Finnick nodded along. “Do you think they’ll be in trouble because of Annie?” he asked. It happened sometimes, revenge kills on account of a previous victor, but if it wasn’t personal or helping a story unfold on the screen, the strongest contenders tended to be more strategically inclined than that. 

Mags shook her head. “Annie won by swimming,” she said. “It was a very lucky win for her, boring to the audience.” Lucky in every sense of the word, Finnick understood. “She isn’t interesting enough for that narrative.”

Reassured, Finnick started making calls, telling Brutus and Cashmere with a gesture that he would join them at their consoles as soon as he had a budget at hand. Grimacing, he tried to ignore Clarity Rudder, who was glancing at him as if she was trying to decide where to bury his body. 

Maybe she just really had a problem with beautiful people. 

Finnick spent the rest of the day keeping an half an ear on the banter unfolding in the pack while he talked to potential sponsors, trying to make out a story they could start building for Niko, something for Templesmith and Flickerman to explore once they fed it to them in their mentoring interviews. It was sort of what Four was known for, keeping the Capitol entertained with swerve and guts and signature narratives, what Mags had worked on all her life. Woof had once said half of the typical Games narratives had been invented by Mags. She would tell the most outrageous stories about tributes in front of the camera without even having to lie. 

Chatting up the sponsors on the phone, Finnick listened to his own velvet voice, marveling at how it had just suddenly sounded like that one day, so unlike his own. 

It was late in the evening when an Avox hurried past him with a note. He wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t for Johanna’s low, “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. She hasn’t even made it to the morgue,” that made most mentors look. 

Her face hardening into a mask, Johanna threw her headset off and took her long legs off the console. “Switch with you later,” she told Gang, her mentoring partner. “Looks like I’m just going to be terribly popular this year.” Finnick raised his eyebrows at her, but the furious look she gave him told him where to shove his inquiry. She generally looked furious at everybody who looked after her sauntering off. 

That was when it suddenly hit Finnick, what it really meant, having a tribute in the running like this. 

Mouth dry, he looked up at the screen, where night was falling and the pack was making camp, starting a fire and joking with each other while Niko… flirted with the One male. _Male._ Huh. It was a beautiful romantic image of camaraderie that would make it onto the recap tape no doubt. 

Home at Four, he knew, people would be lighting a lantern in their front windows right now. They had a volunteer this year, and he needed to be shown district respect. 

And the longer Finnick kept that volunteer alive, the longer Snow couldn’t send Finnick off to see clients.

The closer Finnick dragged Niko to becoming a whore … 

_No._ He wouldn’t look at it like that. He wouldn’t.

Except, how could he not?

* * *

It was the evening of day two. The alliance between Five and Eleven proved strong, forcing the Career pack closer together, keeping Niko and Corina safe for now. 

Finnick had just told Mags he’d fetch something to eat and a shower, when District Six’ Ralda cornered him on the way out of the room. She gave him a twitchy nod towards a spot near the coffee table; he snatched a batch of cookies from it and started nibbling at one, until he noticed she was staring at it with a strange look of nausea in her eyes. Clearing his voice, he folded his arms behind his back. 

Ralda visibly regrouped. 

“There’s a problem I need you to help me with,” she said, voice surprisingly steady, if unused. “I’d ask Chaff, but Chaff’s home this year and he was never sold anyway.” Just the opener he loved, Finnick thought. Being the man to approach because of how he got around. “They sent Haymitch to remake once his tributes were dead.”

“What?” he asked, because while that wasn’t the most dramatic twist he’d have expected, he still hadn’t expected it. “Didn’t they clean him up before the parade like everybody?” A haircut, a fashion update and a shave, that happened to all the mentors who weren’t sold for sex, as far as Finnick knew. Loss of body hair was reserved for the tributes and the whores.

Ralda gave him a look. “I’m saying Haymitch was sent to remake, Finnick,” she said. “It was on very short notice. He’s got an appointment across town an hour from now.”

“But he’s, what…” 

“Thirty-seven, yes, and no, he’s not the finest stallion in our stables, but there you have it anyway. Maybe the client isn’t rich enough to afford someone like you. Or even, you know. Somebody like me.” Nothing much Finnick could say to that beside concede the point, too drained for a quip on how yes, he sure was a sweet piece of sugar and did she want a lick? There never were a lot of victors on the whoring market at once, just three or four beside him this season, as far as he knew. It was rare that victors became this popular – the last one before him had been Bunny Noxton from Ten, who’d won the 56th and was still too busy seeing regulars to mentor much even now. Caramel Doll from Four had been three years before her – a good Games decade, people called it. He’d retired when Finnick appeared on the market, because they had the same hair color and there was only room for one of them, apparently. Sometimes, victors maintained regulars for a couple of years until that dried up, and there was the occasional pervert, but overall, the Capitol just didn’t like real adults. Those were sold for conversation and company, for the occasional appearance on a television show, yes, but not for sex. 

But as Ralda had implied, beauty base zero wasn’t necessary for conversation and company. 

So much for Haymitch being safe. 

Ralda had wrapped her arms around herself in a protective gesture, lowering her voice so that the bugs wouldn’t catch all of her words. “We all know how it is, Finnick. It doesn’t get easier the more often you have to do it. It gets worse. If you suddenly have to do it after so many years have passed, it’s… it’s hard. And you know Haymitch, he… he gets drunk. He deals badly. He’s got an alcohol problem.” It struck Finnick, how her voice had turned stilted at what was a statement of the glaringly obvious to him. Then it occurred to him that Ralda had been around since before Haymitch had self-destructed. She had to hate sacrificing another piece of his dignity by saying it aloud. “I need you to talk to him,” Ralda continued. “You need to make sure he gets through it in one piece. He goes there drunk tonight and pulls a stunt, they’ll make his district pay, and that’ll be bad. I can talk him down later if need be, but first I need to make sure that he wants to make it through intact in the first place.”

Finnick’s mind was still racing to catch up with that. He knew Haymitch, knew him fairly well. Haymitch had taken him aside quickly when he’d returned to the Capitol at sixteen, when Mags was off mentoring, coaching him on who’d sent him that trident back then and how to behave to turn that person’s mind off fucking Finnick and how that was important. Years later, Finnick had heard all about Septima Coddlebrick’s special tastes, and he was still grateful that he’d never had to get close to that particular toy chest. But still – Haymitch was comparatively old. He’d been drinking too much for ages, Finnick understood, but it had only been two years or so since it had become impossible to hide from the public. Two years ago had been when Haymitch had shown up at the Twelve Reaping plastered, taking the microphone and attempting to give a little speech that thankfully had been too garbled for anybody to understand. He’d been drunk every day Finnick had laid eyes on him since.

Haymitch had lost both his tributes yesterday. Chances were he’d gone off to celebrate that achievement with a bottle. Finnick knew nothing of Haymitch’s life outside the Games and he knew little about alcohol abuse, but he knew asking Haymitch to not drink would be like asking a tribute on a winning streak to not kill. 

“And why do you think I’m the right person for that job again?” he said, doubt coloring his voice. “I mean, I’m half his age. Why don’t you talk to him yourself first?” Somebody as slender as Ralda had to have done it for a year or two. She was sickeningly bony, so she’d have been perfect for the Capitol.

She grimaced, following his thoughts. “I was in no state to be left alone with Capitol citizens after my Games, I can assure you. They were too afraid I’d… contaminate their lunch for fun.” 

Finnick blinked.

“And would you have?” he couldn’t resist but ask. 

Instead of laughing, Ralda raised her chin, and looked away. 

“Sorry,” Finnick said. 

She sighed. 

“Haymitch would just brush me off, Finnick. It’s a handy excuse, but he’d just say I don’t know what it’s like. He wouldn’t be that rude with you. He thinks a lot of you.” Her bony shoulders dropped. “You talk to him? We need Haymitch around in one piece.” She hesitated. “ _I_ need him in one piece,” she admitted reluctantly. “It’s just this one last set of appointments, probably just through the Games. He’d never forgive himself.”

_Right,_ Finnick got back to his earlier assessment. _Qualified to help because of how I’m such a whore._

It made him angry, suddenly.

 _I’m twenty,_ he wanted to inform Ralda. He wanted to scream it, actually, right at her face. Who did she think she was? _They made me gut people with spears when I was a kid. Now they make me fuck people, twice my age, who I don’t even like. I can’t help anybody. I can’t do any of it. I’m not even sure I’ll make it through this Games alive._ Ralda was right in one thing. It didn’t get easier over time. It got worse, until Finnick dreaded every day even at home, because the Games got closer every day. He started forgetting how to imagine what sex should feel like, and when he managed anyway, he wanted to cry as if he was a child. He was the last person in the world who could convince Haymitch Abernathy to stay sober. He was fighting not to _be_ Haymitch Abernathy, hiding at the beach with his tridents all those days, and breaking into those tears as if he was _crazy_. 

But Haymitch would do the same for him. Most victors would if they were asked. Finnick knew he couldn’t say no. Not if there was a chance that Ralda was right, and there was actually something he could do. He could hardly refuse. 

“Of course. At least I’ll try,” he said with a sigh. “Is he back yet?”

“He’s on the roof,” Ralda said and reached out with her frail hand to pat his arm, then stopped herself midair as if waiting to see if he would flinch away or leash out; when he didn’t, she resumed the motion. A habit only a victor would think up. 

_We’re all damaged,_ he thought. _We’re all of us in ruins. All in a different way._

The touch felt light like that of silk, barely making an impact. “Good boy,” Ralda muttered, as if she felt a hundred years old as well. 

What they all sounded like, he miserably thought. 

Maybe that was where Seneca Crane had taken the inspiration for his arena this year. Except for how their ruins never got the chance to get covered by anything, moss or scar tissue or otherwise.

* * *

But Finnick didn’t want to talk to Haymitch, Haymitch who’d won the year Finnick was born. It was too easy for him, who liked Haymitch, to picture all the things Haymitch could have been, if he hadn’t been reaped. Haymitch still tended to command a room whenever he forgot that a victor wasn’t allowed. His temper picked the weirdest times to resurface, sheer physical strength still made him dangerous in that way every victor knew to respect, and he held fierce pride in his futile little starving district that Finnick couldn’t but admire. In another world, Finnick thought Haymitch would have been a skipper, protective of his crew until death and deserving every bit of loyalty they offered in return.

The Games didn’t produce leaders though, he thought. They didn’t even produce plain killers. A killer could atone for their crime and pay off that debt and die with a bit of relief. It wasn’t that easy for a victor, who’d lived when others had deserved it so much more. It wasn’t like you were making a sacrifice, if you were only ever trying to stay alive. 

Haymitch was leaning on the railing on the roof, right at the blind spot where the surveillance wouldn’t catch any words, swanky silver silk shirt falling loosely over smooth leather pants. It looked surprisingly good on him; ‘not starved’ was certainly the way to go with the ladies in the districts. Finnick knew, even before he stepped up to him and leisurely lounged against the railing himself, that Haymitch’s shirt would be fashionably unbuttoned at the top. He’d be clean-shaven and his hair would look as if his unruly dark curls were meant to fall that casually. It was a popular look this season. Beauty base zero had been reached and explored. Haymitch didn’t look like a killer. He didn’t quite look Capitol either, but like a luxury good from District One. Like Finnick did, too. 

Like a collaborator. 

“Surprised I never see you play around with the force field up here like the others,” he idly said, trying to chase the foul taste in his mouth away. “I’d have thought you’d enjoy that, seeing how it’s something like your specialty.”

“Been a while since I’ve enjoyed my clever ideas flying back in my face,” Haymitch said with a perfectly straight face, just to break into a hysterical laugh the next moment, slightly unhinged in that way he’d become. It was then that Finnick was hit by a wave of thick liquor breath, and he swallowed down a grimace, because obviously Ralda was right: Haymitch wasn’t dealing well with this, and Haymitch was drunk. Of course, Haymitch was drunk. 

But what in the world was Finnick supposed to do about it?

Dropping his casual stance, he decided to try cutting the bullshit. “You know you’ll have hell to pay if you don’t start sobering up just about now.”

“So they keep telling me,” Haymitch lightly agreed, taking a sip from a flask Finnick hadn’t noticed was dangling between his fingers. 

“Well. It’s just this one more client, right? They probably won’t want you for longer than the Games. I doubt you’ll have a renaissance and get back into the saddle full time.” Not at his age, not without losing some pounds first. Certainly not as long as he didn’t start commanding public attention by producing victors. That thought made Finnick uncomfortable, though, reminding him of his own thoughts, making him wonder if Haymitch had ever led any promising tribute into a trap so that the Capitol would keep ignoring him. Haymitch was… Haymitch. He was obviously a better man than Finnick. 

Another thought occurred to Finnick, filling him with a new sense of alarm, because Ralda hadn’t actually _said_ it. Clearing his voice, he asked, delicately, “You’ve had to do it before, right? This isn’t a _first_?”

“What?” Haymitch looked at him like he thought Finnick had cracked, the notion apparently just that inconceivable for him. Then he snorted, and took another sip. “Never been a Finnick Odair, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “Not that I’m not trying my mightiest to suppress it, but yeah. I used to turn my share of heads. Served the Capitol well enough for three or four years, before your district’s Caramel came around. Us lesser pretty boys were old news after him.” 

“Why do you think that client wants you now?” 

“Daddy kink?” Haymitch cheerfully shot back. 

Finnick made sure to let his inner pain at that one show when he shuddered, and the other man laughed bitterly, clapping him on the back as if Finnick was the one to comfort. 

“Don’t scowl. You wouldn’t want to get wrinkles, I’m sure.”

“The others are scared that you’ll do something stupid tonight.” Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that annoyance started coloring his voice. It was too much. Why him? He’d just screw it up, and people would _die_. “We all know you have bad ideas when you get wasted. You’ve made it for twenty years already. You can’t get addicted to that stuff now, it’ll just kill you. You think Snow is going to let you get away with it? _You_?”

It was futile, of course. His words hit Haymitch like they’d hit the force field, bouncing off. It seemed that all they did was give him a reason to have a look at his watch, screwing the lid on his flask, hiding it in a pocket of his pants underneath his fancy shirt. He made sure not to tear the silk, Finnick observed with loathing. He’d grown up on a shrimper and Haymitch had grown up in a forest or a coal mine or something, but both of them knew not to put a tear into the damn silk. Haymitch might finally have been hurting too much to give a fuck anymore, but the Capitol had still broken both of them in for good.

“Remake’s given me something to cover the smell, no matter how much I drink,” Haymitch informed him. “Fancy little chewing gum thing. Plenty people drink a lot and hide it well, you know. How do you think that Capitol drunks do it? So, no.” He smirked. “I’m not going to be stepping off the platform tonight, I think. We’ll see about tomorrow.

“But tell Ralda I appreciate the concern.”

“Plenty of people stop drinking altogether,” Finnick stated the obvious, letting go of the railing in frustration. 

Haymitch shrugged. “Doubt that I could.” 

With those words, he threw Finnick what he must have thought was a sea salute and sauntered off, vanishing between the shadows of the roof. Then the door to the stairway could be heard falling shut. _Skipper, my ass,_ Finnick thought, angry, because he knew he should just stop using his mind altogether, making ridiculous worlds like that one up. Yes, it was killing Haymitch to go to that appointment. Surprise, surprise. Maybe Ralda was right and Haymitch was as good as dead. So what? Wishing had never made anybody happier. All of it, Haymitch and Ralda Cavalera made him _mad_ and he was trembling again, incapable of doing anything to stop it, turning to stare at the Capitol skyline through the force field that was invisible and still always there, and clasping the railing so hard his knuckles turned white. 

_Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t you fucking dare._

Haymitch didn’t have a choice. Finnick didn’t have a choice either, not about what kind of person he was becoming, whether he’d be a drunk like Haymitch, or skittish like Caramel or just convince himself it was all so grand like Brutus. There were so many things he hated in his life, crying seemed like the only possible reaction exactly because he hated the tears so much. 

_You do have a choice about whether or not you’ll help Niko get home alive,_ he thought, hating himself even more because, yeah. Great. 

Maybe when it came down to it, he was just a plain child killer after all. Maybe the rest didn’t matter that much because that one overruled all.

* * *

To make matters worse, Jo was waiting for him when the elevator opened to the floor of Four. She was sitting on the carpet, leaning against the wall across the hallway, her tight skirt rolled up all the way around her waistline as if it had been in the way of a more comfortable position. She wore lace underneath. An Avox walked by carrying a stash of towels, unable to suppress his rapid blink when she rose without bothering to smooth it down, and she threw a kiss and a wink after him. Whippings for ogling Capitol meat visibly flashed before his inner eye; he paled and fled. 

Finnick wasn’t in the mood. “What the hell, Jo?” 

“Might as well flaunt it if you’ve got it,” she said, unconcerned. Equally unconcerned about all the skin she was showing Finnick, she leaned against the wall and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her blouse was only half buttoned. “I hear you had a little chat with everybody’s favorite drunk.”

“Yes, as little good as it did. Mentor Central thinks he’s pretty much on his way to get himself killed.” Or cost his district a couple of food rations and yeah, Ralda was right - knowing Haymitch, that would hit him even harder than having to take it up the orifice of the season. 

Johanna frowned. “And are they right?”

“He’s an addict, Jo.” Finnick sighed. He was too tired for this, and not just from the long day at Mentor Central. “What do you expect? He’s burnt out, he’s done. He’s a drunk, he couldn’t stop if he wanted to and I don’t think he’s all that interested in trying. Chances are he’ll be dead in a puddle of vomit someday soon.” 

“Oh, so it’s all his own fault now?”

“Huh?” He raised his eyebrows at her accusing tone of voice. 

Johanna pushed herself off the wall, all grace like a cat in her lush green dress and with glitter in her spiky hair, even now in her rumpled state. She was perfectly beautiful in her own way, Finnick had often thought, and more cynically – just beautiful enough for the Capitol. Now, though, she was angry, like she’d been angry all through the week, and he didn’t know what to do with that at all. Finnick was struggling himself. They all were struggling. Haymitch at least only made people miserable because they cared, but if Johanna went on like this for much longer, that would cease to be a problem in her case. Most victors hadn’t won by being kind and understanding people. Most victors fell apart at some point, like Haymitch two years back, like Finnick right now, into little wasted bits. 

“Everybody’s on his back because he isn’t keeping it together enough,” Johanna said harshly. “Oh no, how can he ever get tributes home alive if he acts like that. His stupid little district will lose even more food, as if they aren’t used to it, if he doesn’t behave like the proper fuck toy he’s supposed to be. He’s from _Twelve,_ Finnick. They’ve only ever had one other victor before him, and he was a default win. Wanna know what happened to him?”

“Jo, nobody is saying Haymitch…”

“Hanged himself from a damn tree,” she hissed without letting him speak, and fuck, were those tears in her eyes? “‘Course he did. People _die_ here, Finnick, it’s not fun and games for some of us. It’s not for us like it is for you and Brutus, or fucking Ralda Cavalera who everybody coddles like she’s still a baby girl because ooh, poor crazy Ralda’s scared of food. We don’t get to go home and have our precious hair ruffled by our old mentors and our family and friends and all the people who’re so fucking glad we take care of their dead kids for them. We don’t get to have our names carved in some monument. We have to make things right on our _own._ Do you have any idea what that feels like?”

Finnick thought of his brothers’ looks when they saw him at Capitol parties on the television, wearing bits of cloth that barely qualified as dress pants. He thought of Mags and all his shame skyrocketing whenever he was around her, and no, his name _wasn’t_ on the damn monument because he _hadn’t_ been a volunteer, he hadn’t saved a child or _anybody_. He thought of Niko Genero and how he was working on getting him home so that Cherry could make him a slut, too. 

A bitter laugh escaped him. “I think I’ve got a vague idea.” 

“Then have fun being miserable about what a good little whore you are while you have your mom to pat you on the back,” Johanna hissed. Off she was, hitting the elevator button with a force as if her life depended on it and shooting him a last look of fury through the glass door until she slid out of sight.

Finnick resisted a groan, resisted an urge to hit a wall or kick a chair or something, too. Instead, he turned on his heels and finally trudged off to his rooms. Mags was old, he thought. Mags was old and shouldn’t have to sit watch for that long just because he wasted his time with… He wasn’t even sure what this had been. 

Johanna was mad at something, alright, more than usually, but hell if he knew what it could be about. There was something she had said that was nagging away at him already, something out of tune, but he just couldn’t point his finger to what it might have been… 

It would kill him, Finnick thought miserably. It actually would kill him, only ever being barely able to prevent things from getting worse, and failing at that most of the time, too. 

He had a pretty certain feeling that nothing of this little talk with Johanna had had anything to do with Haymitch or the Games.


	3. Chapter 3

Early next morning, the Career pack woke up to the sound of the cannon: Corina was dead. As all of their captivated audience could have told them, it had been One’s female who’d snuck out of her sleeping bag at night and suffocated her with her blanket. Neither the hosts nor the occupants of Mentor Central could even make out a clear reason why; strategically, it weakened the alliance and put her in the danger of having to face an inquisition of four angry Careers. Meanwhile, the pack just knew that one of them had betrayed them, and none of them knew who. But they knew that the Five-Eleven quartet was still around, fortifying a ruined house with spear traps while they improvised fire grenades with the supplies they’d received, so they reluctantly stuck together for another day, each suspecting the others. 

Mags was out of the Games, and it looked like Snow had decided she could watch Finnick’s tribute for him now. He’d received a summons to remake, and to one Juno Sundown, before he’d finished breakfast, an hour after the kill. 

Not that he finished it after he read the note. Finnick was in the bathroom and puking his guts out seconds later. Groaning, he sank back against the wall, and muttered a thanks when Clara, his Avox handed him a towel with pity in her eyes. 

That reaction was new, and he didn’t even know what was wrong with him. Juno was a regular and she wasn’t a bad sort, so he knew this one would be almost pleasant even and it absolutely wouldn’t hurt. His subconscious had decided otherwise, though. He resolved to send Clara for a pill to numb his stomach, and got on his way to have his body hair ripped out. 

The rest of the afternoon, Finnick spent tied to a bed by careful textbook knots that wouldn’t tighten if he struggled, remembering to emanate the occasional sound of pleasure while Juno prattled on to a business partner on the phone. She got a kick out of letting him wait, and Finnick knew she actually trusted him to safeword out if something went wrong while she wasn’t looking. It had somehow slipped Juno’s attention that her paying copious amounts of money for the pleasure of Finnick’s company probably meant he’d rather be home reading a book. _“But you have an erection,”_ he could imagine her arguing full of alarm. _Yes,_ he thought, grimly searching his mind for something that would keep him aroused without any other stimulation. _And I worked on it hard._ That had been much less of a problem at sixteen, when everything had gotten him going. 

“Minister Crooks can have my ass,” Juno was saying pleasantly to her friend on the phone, and, “Well he can try, but you wouldn’t believe the dirt I have on him.” Stroking along the length of Finnick’s body with the riding crop she never seriously used, Juno gave him a smirk when she walked by. Finnick bit his lip and squirmed and tried to breathe through the unsettling feeling in his guts. “No seriously, I haven’t told you about that before?”

It had to be nice, having a phone that wasn’t bugged, Finnick thought. Twenty minutes later, he’d learned more about the District Logistics Department than he had ever needed to know. Apparently the freight trains between Five and Nine needed to be rerouted through Four, and Minister Crooks possibly had a dead body buried in his basement from a tax fraud coup. Another half an hour later, he’d managed to push himself back into the appropriate mind frame deep enough for a rather decent orgasm, and Juno was happy with the two she’d given herself riding him, so she kissed him on the cheek and let him leave for the day with a new bracelet around his wrist. 

His life was just strange, Finnick thought, staring at a public screen across Juno’s building to check if Niko was still alive. The answer was yes, as the camera was showing him just now, flirting with the male of One again – Velvet was his name – as safe and sound as it got during Games. 

Really, really strange.

* * *

The Career pack launched an ambush on the Five-Eleven alliance. It wasn’t a bad plan, but bound to cost lives on both sides. Finnick stood by and watched, arms tightly wrapped across his chest. Around him, all the victors followed his example one by one eventually with varying expressions of tension, weariness or sheer curiosity, even if it didn’t concern them. It was a rather involved battle concept for a Games and a bunch of teenagers. 

Soon enough, Clarity Rudder was done for the day. The One female slipped and fell into a cavern spiked with spears, and that was that. Clarity shot Finnick another angry look when she dropped back into her chair and rubbed her face, as if her girl killing Mags’ tribute and then dying was Finnick’s fault instead of cosmic justice. 

The two children from Eleven were the next to go. With Eleven-Five in shreds, that promising Two male decided to turn on his team, and a secondary little bloodbath commenced. Half an hour later, Niko was running through the ruins for his life, eyes wide and scared, and Finnick found himself urging him on despite himself. There was a nasty burn wound on Niko’s leg from a grenade, but he had the presence of mind to hide behind a wall and let Velvet race by, the echoes of his own steps too loud in the One’s ears to hear that Niko’s had stopped. 

It was the fourth day only, yet they were down to the Final Eight. Flickerman and Templesmith assured them that, so far, it had been the fastest Hunger Games in twenty-seven years – “A _very_ bad year for bathroom breaks,” Flickerman quipped with a laugh. A shudder ran through Mentor Central, when, in a startling change, tributes suddenly had names again: Interviews flashed across the screen all day, transforming males and females back into real children, scared to die and starkly alive. That wasn’t the Six female anymore who raided Five-Eleven’s supply while they battled it out, dramatically shaking up the betting pool. It was Ralda’s Camilla Charms, sixteen years of age, who’d wanted so much to be a nurse. The bull from Two was Fulvius Tucker, Brutus’ tribute, and had three uncles who all looked exactly like him, convinced that he’d win, each holding a beer mug and singing a fan chant at the camera with desperate enthusiasm. People said “Niko,” when they spoke to Finnick now, not “yours.”

Honestia called and reported that somebody had set-up a fan page for Niko on the digital networks, and it was steadily gathering momentum now. It didn’t impact on sponsorship yet, but that was bound to change if it reached critical mass, and if Niko didn’t die first. Finnick still had enough money to send him the burn medicine that allowed Niko to heal while sleeping through the night under the ledge of a former balcony; Finnick himself lounged in front of his console all night. He was working on the fighting sticks. 

Everybody’s head turned when Haymitch walked into the room. 

He’d apparently taken a shower after he finally returned from his client; his hair was still wet now. The smell of clean district soap and something flowery was unexpected, making Finnick startle when Haymitch walked by. His shirt was buttoned properly. His feet were steady, his eyes reasonably sharp. No smell of booze that Finnick could make out.

“What’d I miss?” he asked and screened the life stats and position charts with the practiced eye of two decades. He was adding a gracious shot of liquor to the cup of tea he’d grabbed from the bar, but he was still the most put together Finnick had seen him in years.

* * *

Juno decided to book Finnick for the rest of this Games. 

She didn’t even touch him the next evening. Not with her hands anyway. After a dinner at her favorite restaurant that Finnick spent serenading her skill with a rope, she had him kneel on her kitchen table and urged him on with symbolic little slaps of her riding crop while she watched him jerking off. _I’ll get used to it again,_ Finnick desperately thought, moaning and working on himself and casting for something, anything in his mind that would get him off at Juno’s pace. Clarity Rudder blowing him on the couch of the Training Center bar. Why not. Fucking Juno bent across the arm of her own couch. She had nice breasts, he supposed. Pounding into her and making her cry that he should stop, not just for show but full of fear, and spitting on her when he was done. 

“Would you mind if I cleaned up?” he asked in a subdued voice, come dripping off his hand. It didn’t quite sound like his own voice. 

Juno let him go without a blink, without noticing anything amiss. She probably thought he needed to pee. Most of his regulars weren’t that kind, but Finnick knew there were other clients who would have liked to, say, watch. He closed the bathroom door behind him and breathed and breathed, until the swaying all around him stopped. 

_I hate this,_ he helplessly thought and splashed water on his face. And, _I’m not like that. I don’t want to be like that._ But he refused to look into the mirror when he did so, at his lush lips and flawless skin and at his shoulders that he’d always hoped would stay somewhat gangly but, not so much. He longed to stare and let the hallucination of his Games scars soothe him but was too afraid that doing so would make him crack for good. 

A man with fantasies like that should have a demon scar.

He could eat candy as much as he wanted, Finnick thought. He could start drinking beer, whatever. No matter how Cherry liked to fret, his metabolism was a piece of art as well. 

He’d never get fat.

* * *

“Is he dead?” he asked when he walked into the Four quarters later to find Mags and Honestia hunched over a sponsorship sheet. Honestia waved it off and Mags said, “Seeder is watching him for us. We’re talking district marketing for future Games. Go to bed.” And Finnick shouldn’t, because Niko was his tribute and Mags was so damn old, but he felt oddly empty, and light, as if he was only carrying around half his weight tonight. He wanted nothing but to shower and to draw a blanket up to his chin in bed, as if it was winter and cold. 

Mags knocked on his door softly at some point, but he didn’t let her in and eventually, she left him alone, although she must have noticed the light shining through the gap underneath his door.

* * *

Secretia Colbert was an actress. Finnick faintly remembered her holographic face flickering across a big screen while he gave someone a hand job at a private theater. It had been the kind of movie Chaff and Haymitch would laugh themselves silly about – country bumpkin victor introduced to city life by Secretia, the sophisticated escort. 

This season, Secretia had chosen long neon green hair that fell all the way down to her knees and often served as substitute for clothes, strategically fastened to her bra. She could definitely have afforded Finnick. It wasn’t Finnick, though, who the gossip news channels showed pressing her against a wall in an alley behind a club. It was Haymitch.

Secretia would give shrill laughs, loud enough for the camera to pick it up, when Haymitch leaned in and whispered something into her ear. The camera managed to capture his face, and when he noticed it did, he gave it a somewhat shark-like grin across her shoulder in return. 

It was… sort of bizarre, actually.

“Never knew Haymitch screen-tests that well,” Kyle Akumi remarked. 

“Never knew he cleans up. At all,” Clarity Rudder said. 

“I think he’s falling in love with her,” Gang Chen said, and pretty much everybody turned to look at him. “What?” he said. “He’s been pretty relaxed since he met her, pretty sober, too. You all thought he’d self-destruct again, just admit it, and look at him now. He’s _happy_.”

“You should know,” Johanna snapped unpleasantly before she left the room. Gang rolled his eyes. Nobody quite got him – he’d left District Seven to live in the Capitol for a career in music. Since he’d never offered much of an explanation as to how that had come to pass, it made people talk. 

Cecilia chortled meanwhile. “If anybody shouldn’t buy everything they see on the television, it’s us. Especially when sex is involved, if you know what I mean. Right, Finnick?” 

“ _He_ should know,” Clarity said. 

“I love each of my acquaintances with passion at a given time, didn’t you know?” Finnick said, and threw Clarity a kiss that made her snort. Then he turned to look at Ralda, and asked more soberly, when he was sure the others wouldn’t be listening anymore, “What do you think?” 

She’d wrapped her arms around herself again, giving the screen an unhappy look. 

“I don’t like it,” she said. 

Finnick shuddered at her tone against his will. 

None of them knew that Niko’s fighting sticks had been waiting at the parachuteers’ for an hour, wrapped and fully paid off and ready to be deployed. 

It was just that he couldn’t make himself give the okay.

* * *

“Are you going to kill yourself?” Finnick asked as soon as Haymitch opened the door. 

Haymitch gave him a look like he’d lost it. “Is this Ralda again?”

“It’s me,” Finnick said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants. 

Haymitch sighed. 

“Roof’s nice this time of day,” he said.

* * *

That turned out to be untrue. Harsh wind blew across the roof today. It was supposed to be summer, but the temperature had rapidly dropped over night. Cherry was scrambling to alter Finnick’s outfits. She usually wouldn’t bother, but Juno had complained to her that even Finnick couldn’t walk around without a proper suit in bad weather, it would give him a cold. 

Juno would be off to a business trip in few days. Finnick didn’t know who’d be the next client yet. If the Games were already over by then, probably a group event. There tended to be group events when people had to bridge the time until the victor could be crowned. Finnick almost looked forward to them right now. No need to worry about maintaining your erection at those, not with the abundance of hands on your cock and cocks shoved up your ass, fortunately not usually more than one at the same time. 

Finnick found that this almost sober Haymitch felt steady at his side, steady and safe. 

“So does it actually get easier?” he asked, leaning on the railing and looking down onto the streets. He wondered what would happen if he spit at the force field, whether that would bounce back up, too. He was almost tempted to try. 

“What, the whoring?” Haymitch asked. Watching him out of the corner of his eye until Finnick nodded, he turned to stare contemplatively across the towers himself. “Probably not.”

It felt strangely safe to stand up here, wind blowing his hair into shambles, like it would on his father’s shrimper on a rough day, far off shore. On the other side of the roof, the wind chimes were tinkling so madly that they still almost drowned out their voices. But Haymitch felt steady like a rock, and Finnick thought, maybe Secretia Colbert had just seen something in him when others hadn’t bothered to look. 

He wondered if it could be true, if Haymitch was falling in love with a Capitol woman. If something like that could ever possibly happen.

But Haymitch would just laugh at him if he asked, no matter if it was ludicrous or true. 

“Is it true that there was another victor at Twelve who killed himself?” Finnick asked instead, remembering what Johanna had said. 

Haymitch was quiet for a while. 

“Yeah,” he eventually said. “Shane March. 39th Games. Everybody called him Swagger. He was found on the Meadow, hanging from a tree, when I was twelve. Never talked to the guy.” Another moment of silence. “He gave a little speech every year he came home from the Games. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t make it this time. I tried, I tried hard, but there was nothing I could do. Next year will be different’.” Haymitch snorted half through his imitation of Swagger March, but there was a strained quality to his voice when he finished the recital. “‘Next year we’ll win.’”

“But you didn’t.”

Haymitch shrugged. “Just doesn’t work like that.”

Finnick thought of Niko Genero. He thought of the fighting sticks waiting for deployment, the ones that would transform Niko into a menace like Finnick had been. It wasn’t that his favored weapon would guarantee he’d win. But the Capitol’s love might just. Finnick had seen the boy with his sticks during training week. He’d be aflame with grace and speed. He’d steal their hearts with the beauty of his kills. 

Just before they stole his. 

“Ralda thought you’d have an episode,” he said. “You’d drink yourself to death.”

“Whole fucking Games is an episode,” Haymitch said. 

Finnick laughed. He couldn’t help it. It _was._

Maybe he should look at it like that once he got home, like it was _practice._

Though practice for what, he wasn’t sure.

Rolling his shoulders, Finnick leaned over the railing and looked straight down the building, like he’d done when he was fourteen and Cherry brought him here. He’d never quite understood why she did it at the time, because it wasn’t like she explained about the bugs or even said anything that would have been incriminating. She never had. But she’d been busy throwing out her whole plans for the tribute costumes once she had a look at his face, and almost fainted from exhaustion half through her frenzy, desperate to be magnificent. That day on the roof, she’d leaned against the railing and watched the wind destroying his hair. And she’d touched his cheek and said, she’d wanted to see who he really was before she made him somebody else. 

Thousands of colorful Capitol ants filled the streets underneath, so far away, spilling over crosswalks and past cars. 

“If Niko was your tribute,” Finnick asked the older man, “would you want him to get home?”

Haymitch turned to him very slowly. In the corner of his eye, Finnick could see him searching Finnick’s face. His voice was carefully blank. “Now why would I not want that?”

“Because you die in the Games, either way,” Finnick said. “Because if Niko does get back, he’ll spend the rest of his life slutting himself out.”

“Being raped doesn’t make you a slut,” Haymitch said. 

Finnick flinched so hard that it hurt him inside. 

Haymitch kept watching him. 

Finnick wished he wouldn’t. 

“A tribute with those odds,” Haymitch said, turning towards the city, propping his elbows up as if he didn’t have a care in the world. His words were casual, but they were firm as well, and the wind didn’t threaten to carry them away. “A tribute with those odds, I’d bring him home to Twelve, or I’d die trying.”

“Why?”

“Because he can always walk into the fence by his own choice if he doesn’t agree with the lifestyle.”

“But victors barely ever kill themselves,” Finnick argued, the words like ashes in his mouth, still struggling with what Haymitch had said just before, the words he’d used. “We’re survivors. If we knew how to give up, we would have done so during our Games.”

“So that’s your answer right there,” Haymitch said. 

Finnick didn’t know why being forced into a relationship had sobered Haymitch up. Gang Chen’s theory suddenly scared him out of his mind. It reminded him of Juno Sundown, who made him feel good things like gratitude and relief because she knew the difference between kink and cruelty, because she honestly wanted him to enjoy himself, she even got off on it. Because she’d let him safeword out if she’d just understand that President Snow wouldn’t. Capitol child she was, she’d done her homework; she’d just read the wrong books. 

It was so easy to picture himself settling for that, if it just wore him down enough – that infinite relief of finding that what he had been served by fate had been what he’d wanted all along. Like Gang Chen, moving to the Capitol to play the violin. 

It made something awful pulsate inside him, some awful ancient pain right underneath his sternum. Finnick knew, instinctively, that it wouldn’t be like the nausea and tears, which haunted him but came from _him_ whenever nothing else did anymore. That pain was something else, something that would never go away once it settled in there, a bleeding wound that wouldn’t ever start scaring. 

But still. _Still._ The Haymitch at his side was almost sober, his profile sharp and clear, still in command of those shreds of himself without a doubt, and still there. If that had been Secretia Colbert’s doing, Finnick found he didn’t care. He didn’t want that for himself, the thought more unbearable than anything the Capitol could ever do to him. But for his friends, for Haymitch, if it just worked for Haymitch, he wanted every little bit of peace available, no matter the cost. He wanted it so much that it hurt him all over again.

Moss growing on the ruins, he thought, until you couldn’t recognize the stone underneath.

And he wasn’t even sure if he meant Haymitch by that, or himself. 

“So while we’re chatting so nicely with each other anyway,” Haymitch said. “About Johanna.”

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Finnick said, pushing the door open before Johanna could throw it in his face. 

She hissed angrily. Finnick was stronger and taller than her, and that had been enough to push himself inside, forcing her back into the room. It was at her quarters on the Seven floor, lush fur carpets covering the floor and carvings etched into the wooden walls. Benjamin, the male tribute from Seven was still in the running and Gang had been watching him at Central the last time Finnick had been there. 

There was no make-up on Johanna’s face. Her hair was wet, cheeks still flushed from the hot shower she’d taken, the sharp smell of sex that always clung to her these days strangely absent right now. She was dressed in a loose shirt, her feet bare. He’d seen her like that once before, he suddenly realized. At her Reaping, when all of Panem had laughed because that girl had broken down and cried. Her Games had been all strategy, he knew, carefully crafted. But that moment, that had been pure Johanna as much as the deadly girl with the axe had been later. Maybe more. 

“The fuck, Finnick,” Johanna said. 

“I’m sorry about what happened to your dad,” Finnick said. “I really am. So sorry. Haymitch figured it out, he talked to Gang. I was too… damn, I’m so sorry. I should have realized something was wrong. I knew he was your only family left.”

The door had slowly fallen shut while he spoke. None of them reacted when it clicked gently into its angles now, swift and smooth and soundless like everything always was at the Capitol. Doors in Four were made of heavy oak, and they creaked. 

He couldn’t _believe_ he hadn’t noticed anything amiss. 

But Johanna had frozen. Her face a mask when she looked at him, she just didn’t move. Safe empty space of several feet between them. 

“Blight even warned me,” she finally said, jerking out of it, as if it didn’t really matter. She grimaced, voice trembling from barely suppressed anger, starting to look away but training her eyes back on Finnick again after all, like a challenge. “He said not to tell. Not to tell my dad. What I was doing in the Capitol. But I thought, what would Blight McCall ever know, he sure was wrong when he wrote me off at my Games.” She sneered, but the expression dropped away again immediately. “What should I have said, Finnick? It’s _compulsory television._ He _saw_ me up there, making out with people in clubs. He kept saying I should stop if it hurt me so much. That he didn’t care what I did but I shouldn’t hurt myself and I should _stop_.” Her voice flipped. “So I told him, okay? So he wouldn’t think I was like that.”

“Oh _Johanna_ …” Finnick said helplessly. “He… it killed him?” _He was executed?_ was what he wanted to say but there were always all those bugs in all kinds of places, and he stopped himself in time, just to be safe. 

The thought of his mom and the concern in her eyes, his brothers wanting to _know_ , made something twist in his guts.

Johanna snorted, wiping away an angry tear. “No,” she said. “He slit his wrists. So that I’d be safe.”

For a moment, Finnick just stared at her. 

They’d all been shown the tape of the Abernathy execution. A haggard starved woman with Haymitch’s eyes. An eight-year-old boy with a round face. A half-starved sixteen-year-old girl. And they’d all been informed that Haymitch had still done what Snow ordered afterwards. That was the whole _point_. Finnick would rather die than see his district punished for his behavior, his numerous cousins, his childhood friends. Haymitch would have rather died, when he’d already lost so much. And as much as Johanna would hate to admit it, so would she. 

Others had been threatened with their status, their reputation, the money they’d made by killing children. 

Who knew, maybe Gang Chen had a story to tell about that, after all. 

Finnick thought of how angry Johanna had been when they met up during prep week, the way the Avox with the note informing her about the name and date had just waited for her tribute to die. Snow was so fucking talented when it came to making points. 

“Johanna,” he managed, unsure what it was he even planned on saying but then, they’d already both moved. Johanna, fighting to just stand by now as if the whole integrity of her body had come loose, was suddenly in his arms. He hugged her reflexively, drawing her close. She was naked underneath her shirt, he could feel it through his clothes, and it startled him to notice that his body had no sexual response to that. 

Johanna’s shoulders were shaking silently, a wet spot forming on his chest where her face pressed against him. Finnick pulled her closer, feeling like he’d never want to let her go, even if it was just this small thing that he could do, a small thing to make her feel better, nothing but a gesture filled with want. 

Maybe that was it, Finnick thought, stroking Johanna’s wet hair. He closed his eyes, breathing in her scent of tears and district soap, and thought of home at Four. The soothing endlessness of the sea. The harsh wind and the gulls and his brothers and Mags, who all saw things in him he hated them to see, but at least they were still there. 

Maybe he wouldn’t have been able to help Haymitch, if Haymitch hadn’t been able to help himself. But maybe if Haymitch helped Finnick, Finnick could help Johanna and Mags could help them all and in the end, that would be enough. 

“I’m sorry that there isn’t more I can do,” he muttered in Johanna’s ear. 

She sniffed, not raising her head from his chest. “Fucking do-gooder idiot,” she said. 

It was a tight smile that he managed in reply, but it was real, and it was his.

* * *

Mags raised her eyebrows at him when he slid into the chair next to hers and put on his headset.

“It’s that time right now when most people watch, right?” he said. Compulsory television was still relative in a world where people ate and slept and made money, especially in the Capitol where everybody thought it a right rather than law. Right now, he knew, they needed everybody in the Capitol to see and fall in love. 

“That it is,” Mags said. 

“Then let’s give them a show,” Finnick said, took a deep breath, and dialed up the parachuteers.


	4. Chapter 4

Everybody had known from the get-go that it would be a quick Hunger Games. 

The Gamemakers had let loose the mutts. Everyone had thought they would; it had just been a matter of time. Until that point, nobody had as much as glimpsed a look at anything that moved in that arena, apart from the tributes, but the engineers were always too proud to not show off their work, giddy to win voting awards at the anniversary shows. So a beautiful and deadly panther had started prowling the grounds. In a matter of two days, it had mauled Nine’s Kenny and Five’s May into bits. Kenny had been thirteen, and had almost made the Final Eight by hiding, cooking tea out of moss roots. May had addressed the camera the night before, telling her father not to worry, she just knew she’d be home. They’d tried interviewing him about it but he was senile, and hadn’t even understood she was not in the house.

Niko was burning brightly with his fighting sticks, explosion of twirls when he took out May’s district partner Leonard. 

The news channels buzzed with gossip about Haymitch and his very public reappearance at the side of a woman who giggled when they got drunk at a club and he puked into a garbage bin, seeming disturbingly enamored by the display. Juno talked train deployment on the phone, while Finnick ate her out. Benjamin from Seven broke his neck when he climbed up a ruins and fell. Finnick had never seen Gang that frustrated before. 

“You must be so incredibly proud,” Cantata Aurelia crooned when she bumped into Finnick on her way to the vomitorium, pupils shot and high as a kite. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been as blatant as to press up against the her dear friend Juno’s pursuit, at that dear friend’s own going-away party, sloppily rubbing herself against his thigh. Finnick smirked, catching her around the waist before she could fall. “Not only strong and dangerous and sexy,” she purred, her sharpened fingernails scratching his jaw. “But also a mentor to the young. I like them competent, you know.

“What do I have to do to get a kiss?” she muttered, leaning in. 

It wasn’t that Finnick would ever have pushed her away. It wouldn’t even have occurred to him to say no; he’d never have known which words he should use. 

But instead he heard himself replying.

“Tell me a secret,” he muttered, whispering in her ear. “Is it true that Crooks became Minister of District Affairs by implicating Bagnold in a tax fraud affair?”

Cantata giggled. “Nooo,” she said in a drawn-out stage whisper. “That was Minister Crooks’ _wife._ ”

Finnick smiled, his lips touching hers and working his tongue until she moaned, until he was almost hard, pushing his thigh further between her legs. There was an expression of bliss on her face when she careened off. 

It was a tiny measure of control, but it was something at least. 

When he returned to Mentor Central that night, Six’s Camilla had fired a bolt into Eight’s Joanie with her captured crossbow, and Final Four was on.

* * *

Camilla had taken out the panther while she was at it, rapidly upsetting the odds in her favor again while she gained more control over that crossbow with every shot, practicing firing it into a porous cement wall all day. A small crowd was always gathered around Ralda’s mentoring station now, offering advice when Terence, her partner was too high on morpha to be of any help. Finnick was firmly glued to his own chair next to Mags, half of a mind to wave any Avox off who approached him about a note with a new summons. But none arrived now. Brutus was never looking away from the screen anymore, vibrating, alive with a burning intensity like Finnick had never seen in him before. His Fulvius still had the best odds. The fourth tribute was One’s Velvet, Niko’s pack sweetheart mere days before, and Cashmere was just impatient with him all the time now, hissing insults at the screen and waving off Clarity’s offers to help. 

Each of them had budgets left, but even the bread cost had skyrocketed. Sponsors were calling Finnick now instead of him calling them, and he sent Niko some shrimp.

Niko and Velvet faced off in the remains of what might have been a Justice Building once, bare white stone walls growing out of the ground. 

Both young men were tall, both were quick, Niko’s dark skin a stark contrast against Velvet’s fair complexion and blonde hair. 

Velvet’s weapon of choice was a broadsword, blade gleaming dangerously against the sinking sun. 

It couldn’t have looked any more stunning if the Gamemakers had staged it like that. 

“Looking forward to cutting that smirk out of your face,” Velvet said when they circled each other, his voice meant to carry for the cameras. 

Niko just showed more teeth in answer. “There’ll be nothing left of you to send home when I’m done.” 

It was over quickly, and there was nothing Finnick or Mags or any of the sponsors could have done to change anything about it. Niko had wider reach with his sticks, but Velvet had been trained just as well. Once he had scored enough minor cuts to wear Niko down, the One launched himself at him with full force, knocking the sticks out of his way like a freight train. It was a daring maneuver, and it broke his arm. The Games channel replayed it all night. When Niko was down, Velvet cut off his head with a clean stroke although he didn’t have to anymore, so Niko wouldn’t choke on his own blood, though he made sure it looked vicious and gory on screen. 

Finnick lowered his head between his knees, breathing until the whooshing sound in his ears very slowly died away. After a while, he noticed that Mags’ hand was on his back, moving in soothing circles like his real grandmother’s used to when he was sick with a cold back before he was reaped. He looked up, and she gave him a little smile, sad either for Niko or for him. 

Maybe for both of them, he thought.

* * *

“Excuse me for a minute,” Ralda said, barely composed, and Haymitch muttered a curse and rushed into the bathroom after her. Fulvius had positively butchered her Camilla into bits. 

It didn’t take more than an hour until he had found Velvet Twain, slowed down by his useless broken arm, who went down almost without any resistance. 

Like almost everybody had considered the safest bet from the start, Fulvius Tucker from District Two was declared victor of the 71st Hunger Games of Panem. At the announcement, he looked up at the hovercraft with an almost anguished expression, like he’d never donned in all of the week. 

“Good win,” Woof said and clapped Brutus on the back. 

Finnick knew to understand it meant that Fulvius would make a fine mentor or teacher one day, but otherwise, just wasn’t exciting or pretty enough to ever be back – the best they could hope for in every respect. 

But he still wished that it had been Niko who got to go home.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” he said. It seemed like it was the only thing he ever said these days, but it had become almost compulsive. Despite the fact that he knew he was repeating himself, it needed to be said, for himself if nothing else, just so that he could hear the words aloud and make it real. 

“There’s nothing you have to be sorry about,” Mags said with a fond look on her face and patted at the spot next to her on the couch at the quarters of Four, which were almost empty now that Corina and Niko were dead and Honestia and the tribute stylists had left. 

Finnick took the proffered seat. He wished he could think of the motion as _gingerly_ or _awkwardly,_ but it looked as if he’d just have to resign himself to the fact that he’d never do anything physical awkwardly in his life. Everything he did would always look smooth, no matter almost nothing ever really was.

“You don’t even know yet what I’m sorry for,” he pointed out. 

Mags smirked at him, looking cunning and old. “You have to be sorry for _none_ of it, lad,” she said and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket to shake him with surprising vigor to bring the message home, so Finnick chuckled despite himself. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t help out at Games school this year,” he said, before he’d even caught his balance. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you when I should have, and that I told you I’d go over to Annie’s, but then I still never did.” He swallowed hard, trying to get it all out in one breath, before he could convince himself that there’d never be enough breath for those words. “I’m sorry I survived my Games when all those volunteers didn’t. I’m sorry … I’m sorry they made me a whore, and you have to see.”

“Hush,” Mags said dismissively. 

“I know it’s not what you wanted me to be.”

“No,” Mags said. “I want us to be free and happy, and not have any Hunger Games for anybody anymore.” She paused, waggling her finger at an invisible spot that Finnick supposed was where he’d find a bug, possibly the one with the best reception. “I hope you caught _that_ on your tape loud and clear.”

Then, she touched Finnick’s jaw with her frail hand, her skin so loose from age that it might as well only have been bones. “I only see good things when I look at you, Finnick Odair.” She paused expectantly, and he realized she wanted him to look back at her, so he did, although there were very few things he’d have liked to do less. Mags, she was like a sea turtle, he thought, although he knew that was one thing he’d better never say aloud if he didn’t want to be smacked over the head. But she still was like a sea turtle to him - old and patient and wise. 

Mags looked him over, all of his face, like she’d done when he was fourteen, on the train, when she’d told him that she’d surely get him home. Except he didn’t feel like she was studying the surface this time at all, contemplating how to use it. She wasn’t thinking about using him. Maybe she never did. She certainly wasn’t studying his bone structure, or eye color and how it was so beautiful. 

“Only good things,” she repeated, looking him square in the eyes. 

“Would you rather have died in your Games?” she asked, and he was shaking his head before she’d finished the question. 

“There you go,” she said, echoing what Haymitch had said on the roof. Or more likely, it was the other way around and Haymitch had been repeating what she’d once said to somebody else. It was a victor’s truth, the only one they’d get.

It wasn’t enough, Finnick thought. He wanted to apologize again. He had a terrible feeling that he’d always want to apologize, and that it wouldn’t ever be enough.

But Mags and Haymitch both were right. It would have been Niko’s choice to say if he wanted to live this life or not live one at all, and it was Finnick’s as well. It was a little choice, but one he’d been making every day for four years without noticing he had. Every day, he could decide to bow out. He could.

He wouldn’t, though.

* * *

There wasn’t a long waiting period to be expected before the crowning ceremony. Fulvius hadn’t been hurt terribly in his last fight, still steady on his feet when the hovercraft arrived, so remake had no reason to take a long time. If the humongous new victor had started paling as if he was planning to faint before they’d fully hauled him in, the camera hadn’t focused on it and it was nothing a surgeon could ever mend, anyway. 

So Finnick expected a note for a tight schedule of last-minute appointments coming in sooner rather than later. He was too tired from the Games, and everything that had happened, to even be surprised when the one penciled into the last row read, like an afterthought, _Secretia Colbert_ and, _Limousine sched. 20-00. Accomp.: Haymitch Abernathy. Full remake, 16-00._

Better than a gang bang, he supposed.

* * *

They met up at the Training Center bar. Haymitch barely spared him a glance when he asked him if he was ready, and they headed out. Haymitch was dressed in a similar get-up from when Finnick had seen him the last time, leather pants and loose shirt smoothing out his waist smartly. Finnick wore dress pants and a jacket, which would have been hilariously conservative if he’d worn a shirt underneath. 

“What’s she like?” Finnick asked in the limousine. 

Haymitch was quiet for a moment. “Expansive,” he eventually said, which explained nothing much. And then, “There’ll be paparazzi. She’ll want you to act as if you’re old friends.” Which didn’t help either. Secretia wasn’t the first client who combined getting laid with informing the public about the interesting people she knew. 

An hour later, Finnick had gotten to know Secretia Colbert up close – _very_ up close, seeing as how she stuck her tongue down his throat almost aggressively while they danced – and he had almost grown convinced that her affair with the aging drunk from Twelve had been a publicity stunt. Originally, anyway. Something about it just didn’t sit right with him. Threesome hook-ups were normal enough in the Capitol, and even now he could see reporters having a go at them in the corner of his eye, camera lights flashing in the dark of the club before the doorman hauled them outside. All of Panem would know what exactly the three of them were about to do with each other tonight, Secretia made very sure of that. But Haymitch was watching them from the bar with a bemused expression on his face, a natural expression, not a mask. Secretia was happily chatting away at Finnick a mile an hour about the one time she’d had a photo shoot in Four and how the fish had smelled _so badly_. But every now and then, she’d glance at Haymitch in a way that wasn’t proprietorial in the least. It was questioning. And Finnick couldn’t make out why.

Haymitch didn’t drink too much.

They eventually left for her apartment, cameras flashing yet again when they entered the car. Secretia let Finnick put an arm around her and snuggled up close, hand under his jacket. When Finnick glanced at Haymitch, he just rolled his eyes and sighed, almost as if to say, _whatever._

Finnick mentally prepared himself to have sex with Haymitch, making himself list all the ways it would be good even if Secretia turned out another Juno, or a creep.

* * *

“I _adore_ the men from Four,” Secretia said, wriggling her manicured fingers at the concierge on the way up to her apartment. “All of them so strong and tall. Like Haymitch.” She winked at Haymitch then, who gave her a look that said, _nice try_. “And such beautiful girls as well. I’d never achieve a waistline like that without changing my diet, and where’d be the fun in that? I have always wanted to sleep with a Four. But I don’t have a girl, I just have you and I _think_ that will be quite alright as well.” She giggled in a somewhat aged and jaded way, forty-year-old woman playing the part of a girl. 

“I’m sure we’ll find _some_ way to conclude the evening… satisfactorily,” Finnick promised her, leaning in with a deep look until she giggled again, and added a salacious stock phrase about how _he_ didn’t take issue with her diet in any way. 

“Here we go!” she announced, retina recognition opening a door. “I know it’s not much but one does have to always stay humble, is what I always say! At least in interviews where people can hear.” Again she laughed. Her apartment was roomier than a house, open spaces rivaling each other underneath a brightly gleaming piece of luster art above their heads. “You two sweet boys get comfortable, and I’ll be right back for more of your delicious octopus skin, Finnick Odair!”

Finnick glanced at Haymitch when she scuttled off, who shrugged. 

“Doubt she knows what an octopus is,” the other man helpfully commented and threw his jacket over an armchair as if he was feeling at home, which at this point was probably the case. 

Considering for a moment, Finnick followed his example. Taking off pieces of his clothes early on had never been the wrong choice. 

He tried picturing Secretia and Haymitch doing it with each other by choice and just… couldn’t.

_I’m so screwed,_ he thought with an inward sigh. 

There’d better be plenty of physical stimulation involved. 

“Bugs are disabled!” Secretia chirped when she breezed back in, and for one long confusing moment, Finnick tried to match that statement up with a fetish. 

Then Haymitch said, “So, enough with the necking. Turns out, Secretia really works for District Thirteen. And I think I’ll just leave the rest of the explanation to her.” 

“What?” Finnick asked, unable to follow any of those words. 

Haymitch gave him what was almost a smile. 

“You want a drink?” he asked. “I did.”

* * *

Fulvius Tucker was crowned the next day, bending his head with a faint blush on his cheeks so that the President could reach his head. A lot of victors had trouble rewatching their own Games but it seemed that Fulvius, like Finnick, had trouble drawing his eyes away even after the victory kill had been shown. 

Finnick’s head was spinning from the news that District Thirteen – District _Thirteen_ – was biding their time while deep cover agents took position all over the Capitol and victors were contacted and stylists were bought out. They could use him, Haymitch had said. Haymitch trusted him to keep mum about it, and it would be useful that Finnick, unlike Haymitch, had obvious excuses to meet people. It would be dangerous, yes, but there wasn’t a possible situation in which Finnick would even have considered saying no. 

_“I hear things,”_ Finnick had said. 

_“Good,”_ had been all Haymitch had replied. 

The victors met one last time at the train station, killing time together while one after the other tickled off. Before leaving to fetch Fulvius, Brutus made time to congratulate Finnick on a first time to be proud of, he was sure it would work out again for Four soon enough. Ralda hugged everyone with something like new color in her cheeks, and informed Finnick that she was glad they’d had a chance to meet. Haymitch only shook his hand, as if he’d never told a rebel organization that Finnick was the victor to recruit. 

Johanna punched his shoulder for goodbye, then muttered, “Fuck it” and drew him into a hug of her own, refusing to let him go for a long time. She’d be returning to an empty house and a new grave, Finnick thought with feeling, holding her especially close. 

He admitted to himself that he got a bit of a kick out of how he was able to lecture Mags on how the trains to Nine and Four were so late today because the tracks had been rerouted for repairs. She advised to slip the district mayor a hint. He might be able to use the information for something. 

Amongst the last to wait for their rides were the Career districts. While the dead and Finnick’s outfits were loaded into the cargo compartment, Finnick told himself, whatever, and walked over to Cashmere Bing. 

Cashmere flinched away from him in irritation when he leaned in from behind and asked in her ear, “So why is it Clarity Rudder dislikes me so much? Apart from the obvious points of jealousy, such as my extraordinary charms and looks. So hard to take for some.”

Cashmere flashed him an annoyed look, and flattened the crinkles on her blouse from how he’d startled her. While he didn’t know her well, he clearly could see that she disliked that he had been able to. Maybe women from One just _all_ didn’t like him. “Do I actually have to explain that to you, Odair?”

“I’m afraid that you actually do.”

The other victor sighed, brushing long blonde hair out of her face. “Think about it for a while. You won the 65th.” He waited, and Cashmere continued as if she was talking to a child. “ _She_ won the 66th. The 67th, she wants to be back like everybody, but never gets the call. Instead, it’s all Finnick Odair paraded up and down the television screen, cheerfully back at the Capitol. And it isn’t even for mentoring. It’s just because they adore him so much, they really want him back, while nobody is talking about her pathetic little win. How well is she supposed to like that?”

Finnick gazed at her in disbelief. 

“She knows I… _enjoy_ that honor very frequently, doesn’t she?”

Finnick thought of what Haymitch had called it, and shied away from repeating it even now, in his head, where only he could hear.

_One day,_ he thought. _One day when I’m safer than now._

“So?” Cashmere retorted with an impatient look. 

Finnick stared at her. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, shaking his head and walking away. 

He didn’t need to hear her reply.


	5. Epilogue

Ralda Cavalera was dead. 

The call had come two days after Finnick and Mags had returned to Four. 

“Haymitch Abernathy is on the phone for you,” his mother had informed him in a strangely neutral voice and he had known the reason why the moment he heard Haymitch speak. It was quite clear that Haymitch was as plastered as Finnick had ever seen him be, and scheduled to sleep it off under the kitchen table. He was barely sober enough to inform Finnick Ralda had been found dead in her compartment when her train arrived in Six. She had cooked herself a meal of moonseed, the plant she had used to poison all those children in her arena fifteen years ago, and eaten it all up. 

Spending the morning on the living room couch and staring at the Capitol gossip news flickering across the television screen, Finnick thought of how that woman had always stared at food, and been anxious about everything, and how it was probably for the best. She’d seemed relieved when she made her goodbyes at the train station, hugging the others and smiling, her mind made up and clear. She’d already have to have bought the moonseed at that point, if she hadn’t just always carried some of it around ever since her victory.

_We all have that choice,_ Finnick thought, looking at a recap of himself dancing at a club with Secretia Colbert, who had apparently just been contracted for a new film. She wasn’t from Thirteen, Finnick knew now, she just worked for them, but others were. She’d told him Plutarch Heavensbee, the Gamemaker in charge of mutt design was from Thirteen, for fuck’s sake, and it looked like Finnick should expect him amongst his regulars during his next visit to the Capitol. 

_“So what happens next?”_ Finnick had asked, and Secretia had shrugged.

_“We wait for a chance, my sweet boy.”_

“I can’t believe you’re still watching that stuff,” a voice said. Finnick looked up to see Keanu, his brother step into the room. Keanu was three years older than Finnick and a little pudgy, awkward like big men sometimes got despite the hard labor on the boat. When Finnick’s name had been called at the Reaping, everybody had known that fourteen-year-old Finnick would still stand a better chance at winning than seventeen-year-old Keanu, because Finnick generally succeeded at most things and Keanu… didn’t. It still had filled Finnick with an ever so slight sense of betrayal sometimes, left to fight for himself. 

Now Keanu was staring at the parade of Secretia Colbert and Hersilius Butterbulp and Septima Coddlebrick celebrating the post-Games events on the screen, a badly veiled expression of distaste on his round face. 

_“Scouting your next lay already?”_ his face said, although their relationship hadn’t devolved as far as to make him say it aloud. Finnick was a victor after all, and in Four, you didn’t question victors. Mags and the other early victors saw to that. All of Finnick’s family knew how being victor wasn’t as good a thing as the media wanted them to believe, and Finnick could see them struggling, every day, to try and understand about women like Secretia and not speak up. 

They’d never expected Keanu to volunteer for Finnick. _Finnick_ never had, not really, not _Keanu_ with his unorganized limps, not when Finnick had been harboring ideas of becoming a volunteer himself when he turned eighteen, because what else could a boy like he be. Even at fourteen, he’d had a slight sense that his family was his to protect. 

The thought of Keanu up there on the screen instead of him was so unbearable that it hurt.

Maybe he’d still become a volunteer after he won, Finnick thought. 

Protecting his family and withstanding what they believed of him, that was his choice. A matter of weighing risks and not _much_ of a choice, honestly, but just because he couldn’t imagine doing it differently probably didn’t mean it wasn’t a choice at all. So that was a sacrifice, after all, just like the one of the district volunteers. 

If he could kill a kid caught in a net and still retain a soul, if he could clench his teeth and be fucked by a Capitol man, he had to be able to deal with his brothers thinking that of him. He had to. 

“It’s good to stay informed,” was all he said in answer to both his brother’s spoken and unspoken words. There wasn’t a reason to tell Keanu about Ralda and how that made him feel, either. It would hit the media soon enough, and the victors weren’t part of his family life. No reason to mourn that, when it was just the way it worked. He might go and talk to Mags about it later. She might need somebody to talk about it, too.

Finnick shut off the television, and stood up. “Did dad say he has any nets that he’ll want us to repair?”

He never would be able to explain, no, Finnick thought, remembering Johanna, all alone in Seven alongside only Blight. Keanu and the others would just never know that Finnick didn’t want to be that person; it would have to be enough that he knew that himself. Meanwhile, maybe he could lend a hand on the boat and help haul in some more shrimp, be useful to his father and the crew. At least, there would always be that.

* * *

“Going out,” he told his mom and pressed a kiss on her cheek. “Probably back in time for dinner, but don’t be surprised if I’m not.”

“But Games school is closed today,” his mother pointed out with that soft voice of hers, and that look of concern. _I know you never make it to Games school when you say you will,_ her eyes said. _I know you just sit at that bay all day long, and I don’t know why you do it, but I can see that it’s not good for you, because I’m still your mother._ It was so similar to how Keanu communicated, the Odair method of leaving things about Finnick unsaid.

“I know,” Finnick replied, not in the mood for a suggestive quip that he might otherwise have made. Something to set her at ease, although they both knew how that wouldn’t work. 

Maybe he just wouldn’t do that with his mother today, and see how it went. 

The resolution made him feel strangely adrift. 

The door fell shut behind Finnick. Harsh wind blew through his hair when he stepped off the porch, leaving the windbreak of the house behind. There was Caramel’s house to the left of his, Calina’s on the other side. His house lay on the highest steep of Victors’ Rock, and he could see all of the twelve colorful victors’ cottages unfolding from up here, rising in front of the wide panorama of the Middletown slope. The coast snaking along the edge of his vision, heavy smell of salt in the air and the rush of the breakers hitting the cliffs behind him. 

_Games school,_ Finnick thought. He didn’t know if he could do Games school just yet, honestly. It still was hard to get up, as if everything just exhausted him too fast; he had to think of Haymitch and Heavensbee and Thirteen and remind himself how there was a point to getting up today, how there was a job that needed to get done. But he had a feeling that it might be getting better. He felt almost giddy to return to the Capitol – scared like always, yes, still dreading it, still wishing he wouldn’t have to – but also strangely giddy. No way to start a rebellion, sitting still on the Victors’ Rock.

They’d held a service for Niko and Corina at the Games school, on top of the district ceremony conducted by the mayor, when Niko’s name had finally been carved into the Monument; there’d been a private funeral he’d been invited to as well. He’d spoken to the Generos when he brought the body home, knowing there would be nothing he could ever say to make it right. But Niko’s mother had taken his hands in hers for a long moment and squeezed them, as if she supposed he had a right to be consoled just as she did, and thanked him for having tried. 

Finnick had told her that her son was a hero, who’d had every right to believe that he could win. It wasn’t that she didn’t know, but Finnick still thought she deserved to hear it a lot.

He didn’t know if there was anything he could tell those kids at Games school who all wanted to use a trident these days although that was a terrible weapon, he’d be the first to tell them that. It would be hard, training them to use a trident or spear or a net, and lecturing them on survival skills, learning their names and seeing two of them picked off every year. But somebody had to do it. Mags was right. She wouldn’t be around forever, no matter that she felt eternal now. 

So maybe he wouldn’t be doing Games school this month. 

Maybe next, though. 

Mags would probably inform him that they’d managed without him for sixty-five years anyway. He could picture it perfectly. 

The thought made him smile just a little. 

_One step at a time,_ he reminded himself.

Annie Cresta’s cottage was located all the way across the Rock, painted a bright blue with white beams. He could see it from here, behind old Rory Colson’s hedgerows. It had gained a little garden with herbs in place of the front lawn since the last time he’d bothered to study it, and Finnick could see a willowy figure moving around in it now, tending to the plants, while her long open hair spun wildly in the breeze. 

Taking a breath to keep his mind clear, Finnick headed that way.


End file.
